ethernet board hardware link down (Onyx2) - SGI

This is a discussion on ethernet board hardware link down (Onyx2) - SGI ; Oddly enough, before I upgraded to 6.5.20 everything worked fine.
But now the lights on my Onyx2's ethernet interface don't even light
up on booting. /etc/init.d/network start and restart have no effect.
Message from IRIX early in the boot process ...

ethernet board hardware link down (Onyx2)

Oddly enough, before I upgraded to 6.5.20 everything worked fine.
But now the lights on my Onyx2's ethernet interface don't even light
up on booting. /etc/init.d/network start and restart have no effect.

(x.y above in place of actual address for security purposes, "hydro" not
real name)

Is this a simple matter of the ethernet board being hosed and my needing
to buy a new
one? If not, any suggestions to how to get this working again?
If the board IS dead and gone, is there a cheap replacement (pref
additional board)
that I can buy somewhere? The ethernet jack is on the same board in
this Onyx2
as the mouse, keyboard, etc and all the other stuff on it works OK.